Homosexuals Assault the Boy Scouts

A perfect illustration of the aggressive invasiveness of the gay agenda is the well-financed and coordinated effort by homosexuals to colonize the Boy Scouts of America. The current assault on the Scouts began a decade ago when a nineteen-year-old Eagle Scout and assistant scout master, who was then a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey, became an outspoken advocate for special programs for homosexuals like himself. This Eagle Scout wrote an article expressing his desires, and it was circulated state-wide by the Newark Star Ledger. James Dale’s newfound identification with the homosexual social agenda caught the attention of Monmouth County’s Boy Scout executives who sent Mr. Dale an official notice that his membership in the Boy Scouts had been revoked. That was in 1990.

The Boy Scouts of America has functioned for years with a de facto policy of “don’t ask/don’t tell” with regard to sexual orientation. James Dale himself is living evidence of this policy at work. What the Boy Scouts of America will not tolerate are outspoken living avatars of the gay ethos in positions of leadership. The scouting organization does not believe that it is the proper place of any Scout leader to be advocating or modeling any sort of sexual behavior.

Once the gay assault on the Boy Scouts of America got rolling, the gays did their best to confuse the American public about the scouting organization’s true policy and intent. Scouting has always accepted boys who are in the process of discovering who they are. That has not changed. What the scouting organization will not allow is the infiltration of their ranks by posturing exemplars of adult sexuality, gay or otherwise. So when James Dale became a public figure closely identified with the cause of an expanded homosexual comfort zone in American society, the Boy Scouts of America did the responsible thing and told Mr. Dale to take his soapbox elsewhere.

Within days of receiving his notice of termination, James Dale hooked up with Evan Wolfson, an attorney for the well-financed Lamda Legal Defense and Education Fund, which specializes in promoting the gay agenda through judicial rulings. In the ensuing years the Boy Scouts of America successfully fought more than a dozen lawsuits against outsiders seeking to fill leadership positions in the Boy Scouts with homosexuals and other unmanly role models, including women. The Boy Scouts are a private organization, after all, and the modeling of healthy masculinity is one of their primary purposes. If the Scouts chose not to include among its chosen role models such unmanly types as women, transvestites, anal erotics, transsexuals in transition, etc., then that is their constitutional right.

But the sexual oddballs would not relent; the prize was too great. If they could colonize the Boy Scouts, then they could wrap themselves in that organization’s hard-won prestige and thereby give themselves a cloak of legitimacy, of normalcy. Colonizing a boys’ organization would also be a romp. The BSA leadership knows only too well the attraction that the Boy Scouts exerts on homosexuals. Those gays who have infiltrated the organization have already caused the boys in scouting plenty of grief.

For example, a New York scoutmaster was accused by a former scout of sexually assaulting him dozens of times in different locations, including campouts and overnight trips. The allegations were made in a $50 million lawsuit against the scoutmaster, Jerrold Schwartz, who led Troop 666 at the prestigious St. Bartholomew’s Church. The investigation produced four tape recordings in which Schwartz admitted sexual contact with the Boy Scout. The sexual assaults occurred in Manhattan and on trips to Philadelphia, Washington and Vermont. Schwartz even attacked the boy on the night before Schwartz’s 1997 wedding. The best cover for a gay predator is a bogus marriage, which makes his straight wife yet another victim of gay duplicity. The Boy Scout dropped out of scouting and began to abuse alcohol and drugs. He revealed the horror of the gay assaults upon him during psychological counseling, it was only then that responsible adults understood that he was yet another victim of the same toxic gay touch that has ruined the lives of tens of thousands of boys assaulted by gay priests. The teen’s parents called the police. The church and the Boy Scouts are also named in the lawsuits for not supervising the gay scoutmaster. Schwartz pleaded guilty. Since then, other victims have come forward. Raymond McGarrigle, general manager of St. Bartholomew’s, said the Episcopal Church “takes the matter very seriously.” They had better take it seriously.

According to the March 2, 2004 Newark Star Ledger a NJ State Senate committee approved a bill that would allow lawsuits against churches, private schools and other charities for negligent hiring or lax supervision of employees who sexually abuse young people. The measure would retroactively strip charities of immunity from lawsuits by victims who were sexually abused decades ago. The bill has cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee; it was prompted by the sex scandal of gay molestations by priests. If enacted, the bill would allow lawsuits against churches, private boarding schools, youth sports leagues and Scout troops. A hearing room filled with sex-abuse victims and their relations burst into applause when the bill was approved. The current New Jersey law dates to 1958, when lawmakers sought to protect charities from lawsuits after the State Supreme Court abolished a centuries-old doctrine of charitable immunity. New Jersey is only one of nine states that still allow charitable immunity. Without such immunity from lawsuits, victims of sexual abuse may sue institutions for careless hiring, lax supervision or the retention of any employee who sexually abuses a minor. In some cases, victims may file lawsuits even after the statute of limitations has expired, with the deadline extended for decades until the victim makes the connection between his abuse and his (her) disrupted psychological state.

The import of all this it that those charities that don’t have the cash to conduct expensive background checks and can’t afford liability insurance, will risk financial ruin if their organizations become colonized in the manner that the Catholic Church was colonized. Those who fret about “discrimination” based on sexual “orientation” should bear in mind that a sexual orientation is a sexual game plan and the topography of gayness is not just a mirror reflection of healthy heterosexuality with different gender labels attached; it’s another species of sexuality that the average person cannot fathom. Therefore, choosing deviant role models would frustrate the mission of the Boy Scouts and it would threaten the organization with financial ruin both from lawsuits and from the exodus of sensible parents who do not want their children scouting with adults who are emotionally hard-wired to some alternative sexual game plan.

The Dale case eventually landed before the ultra-liberal New Jersey Supreme Court which, in 1999, unanimously ruled that the Scouts were subject to New Jersey’s anti-discrimination law and had improperly dismissed James Dale from his leadership position. It would never enter the heads of the New Jersey justices that giving young males authority over those to whom they felt sexual attraction was anything but a good idea. The common sense of the common people eludes them.

Once upon a time, I would transport my daughter and her scout troop to their wooded campsites. Once the car was unloaded, I knew that it was time for me to say goodbye; it was important to their female bonding experience that I leave. I never felt that I was discriminated against or the victim of female prejudice. I shared the moms’ perspective of what was a healthy scouting experience for girls. Character building is best accomplished in the absence of sexual tension. That goes for homoerotic tension as well.

What gays are really seeking is the privilege to pre-empt a parent’s right to be extremely choosy about whom they will entrust with their children. The New Jersey justices were eager to assist the gays in this effort.

All of the rights of citizens that are enumerated in our Constitution are limitations on governmental power. In this case, James Dale was seeking to increase governmental power. He had exercised his First Amendment right to tell the whole state of New Jersey about his sexual proclivities, but then he had a snit when the Scouts exercised their First Amendment right not to associate with those who share his peculiar tastes.

In siding with Dale the New Jersey court created a formula for destroying the Boy Scouts. If the court could compel the Scouts to accept gay leaders at the same time that parents were free to withdraw their sons from scouting, then the program would decay. Good parents are reluctant risk takers where their children’s welfare is concerned. James Dale is probably a nice guy, but I wouldn’t let him walk my son into the woods. Gay and lesbian advocacy papers are replete with assertions that gay sex between adults and anyone over the age of consent is perfectly fine, which should give even gay parents pause. In New Jersey the age of consent is 16. The Boy Scouts accepts “boys” until the age of 21 years. You do the math. In this environment, gays are trouble.

The New Jersey case made James Dale a celebrity. He gave many interviews; his opinions were widely quoted; he spoke to audiences at major corporations, such as Lucent, and on campuses such as Rutgers and Johns Hopkins. He was disappointed to discover that other people have a right to their own moral codes and cannot be compelled to associate with him.

Gay and lesbian organizations didn’t have the sense to understand that the United States Supreme Court decision that eventually overturned the New Jersey decision in Boy Scouts of America vs. Dale, protects them as well. Without this protection there is little to prevent, say, religious fundamentalists from swamping gay organizations with memberships and then neutralizing the effectiveness of the gay organizations by consistently voting an anti-gay agenda. Straights, after all, outnumber gays by about fifty to one.

In the Dale decision the Supreme Court was not guided by any opinion about whether the Boy Scouts’ teachings with respect to homosexuality was right or wrong. Rather, the Court held that what could not be justified is “the state’s effort to compel the organization to accept members where such acceptance would derogate from the organization’s expressive message…The fact that an idea may be embraced by increasing numbers of people is all the more reason to protect the First Amendment rights of those who wish to voice a different opinion.”

As the Boy Scouts emphasized in an amicus brief, “a society in which every organization must be equally diverse is a society that has destroyed diversity.” The high court held that “Forcing a group to accept certain members may impair the ability of the group to express those views, and only those views, that it intends to express.”

All this fine reasoning drove the homosexuals bonkers. They wanted others to accept them even if that meant using the coercive power of the state; they certainly didn’t accept the Constitution’s idea of diversity. The intelligence of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was completely lost on them: “Protection of [an] association’s right to define its membership derives from the recognition that the formation of an expressive association is the creation of a voice. And the selection of members is the definition of that voice.”

The Gays Take Their Revenge

From the moment of the Boy Scouts of America vs Dale decision on June 28, 2000, the gays were bent on having their revenge against the Boy Scouts. With the fury of spurned lovers, they went on the attack. Well-financed gay-advocacy organizations immediately began twisting arms and making threats.

Friends of the gay agenda had already pounded the public with anti-scouting propaganda. On April 1st, 2001, CBS television aired a Sixty Minutes segment that trashed the Boy Scouts for having the effrontery to cling to Scouting’s founding values. The liberals at CBS tried to make a martyr of James Dale, even though a dispassionate review of the facts clearly demonstrates that the Boy Scouts accepts all boys as scouts, including boys like James Dale. When Mr. Dale became an assistant scoutmaster he was still welcome in scouting until he became an outspoken advocate for homosexual behaviors. CBS never asked why so many childless male homosexuals were trying so hard to gain access to the boys in scouting. It’s axiomatic among liberals that the motives of gays are always pure.

When the Boy Scouts of America frustrated efforts by loud-mouthed gay advocates to colonize scouting programs, the gays and the friends of gays launched their campaign of hate. In Fort Lauderdale, city commissioners voted to withhold a $10,000 grant to the Boy Scouts. In Broward County the Children’s Services Administration informed its board that the Scouts did not qualify for $92,884 in grant money because “the group’s ban on gays conflicts with the county’s nondiscrimination laws.” South Florida’s Boy Scouts were threatened with the loss of $400,000 in public and corporate funding because they didn’t want to send boys off into the woods with homosexuals. The United Way of Broward County was eager to affirm its liberal credentials by yanking grants to the Boy Scouts beginning in 2002. (The Boy Scouts is a founding agency of the United Way.) The South Florida Council of the Boy Scouts of America has expressed itself laudably: “Adults are the role models for the youth in our program and should not be discussing sensitive issues in their private lives with Scouts. When an adult leader discusses or advocates a particular lifestyle the BSA has the right and obligation to ask that adult leader to step aside.”

That’s what happened to nineteen-year-old assistant scoutmaster James Dale: he was asked to step aside. Gays and liberals were incensed that homosexuals were not permitted to use their Boy Scout leadership positions as bully pulpits for gay advocacy. The gay propagandists wanted to use the prestige of the Boy Scouts to leverage other social institutions, thereby expanding the gay comfort zone.

Since the Dale decision cities across America have barred the Boy Scouts from schools. In some places the police can no longer sponsor Scout activities. The American Civil Liberties Union affiliate in San Diego is suing the city to evict the Scouts from Balboa Park where they built, and have long operated, superb camping and recreation facilities open to the public. It was the national ACLU that opposed the Boy Scouts before the Supreme Court and that sought to trample the Scouts’ First Amendment right to free association. The ACLU wanted the Court to ignore such outstanding precedents as Democratic Party vs Wisconsin, 1981, wherein the Court affirmed that “The First Amendment guarantees the…freedom to associate or not to associate.” And further, that it is the “freedom to identify the people who constitute the association, and to limit the association to those people only.”

In other words, if the Boy Scouts of America does not want to associate itself with outspoken advocates of splinter-group sexual appetites, that is their right under the United States Constitution. Would the ACLU insist that the NAACP accept into its ranks members of the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nation? Would the ACLU insist that groups for the disabled accept the disciples of “mercy killer” Jack Kevorkian? Of course not. But to satisfy some unfathomable liberal motivation the ACLU has decided that it is of the utmost importance that a boys’ youth group accept as role models avatars of anal erotism, male-on-male lust, and a quasi-autistic response to the female half of humanity. Why are they so eager?

The state government of Connecticut lashed out at the Boy Scouts by withholding a $10,000 annual contribution from its employee payroll plan. The matter went to trial, but the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Said lawyer George Davidson, who represented the Boy Scouts, “What the [lower appeals court] is saying is that government is entitled to make an organization that exercises its First Amendment right pay a price for exercising that right.”

In Sacramento, California the United Way wants to shun the Boy Scouts. The California bar associations in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Santa Clara have urged the state’s Supreme Court to prohibit judges from being members of the Boy Scouts of America because of its policy against populating its leadership ranks with self-proclaimed male-lovers. The left-leaning bar associations want to force judges to publicly scorn the Boy Scouts First Amendment rights.

And so it goes across the land. And who suffers the most from this assertion of gay empowerment: poor minority boys. Under intense pressure from corporations, foundations and gay advocates, the executives of the Philadelphia Boy Scouts compromised their moral principles and commonsense and agreed to admit homosexuals to their leadership ranks. When word of their moral implosion reached the outside world, the local Philadelphia council, which serves 87,000 boys, was inundated with messages from Christians and the national scouting leadership. All of these messages said the same thing: don’t roll over; don’t abandon your moral center; don’t let the future manhood of the boys in your care be shaped by people who have no clue what manhood is and who have no commitment to manly virtue.

The New York Times (7/3/03) was quick to inform us that “Critics of the policy say the Boy Scouts, a long-cherished American institution, are betraying their core values of tolerance and inclusion,” which begs the question of how tolerant and how inclusive a private American association founded on religious values can become before it ceases to be a “cherished American institution.” Indeed, it was only because the Boy Scouts could be relied upon to exclude useless, comical, and trashy adult role models from its leadership that it won the confidence of American parents. If everyone is included and everything is tolerated, then there is nothing to prevent the Boy Scouts from becoming a creep-infested moral wasteland. Only limits and standards will maintain the high quality of any organization’s product, whether it be fine wine or fine men. The Boy Scouts seems too have evolved an excellent recipe for improving the lives of boys, so why screw it up just to make a few childless homosexual males feel a bit less queer? That would be insane.

Of course the New York Times had to include a quote from the pouting James Dale: “It’s the Boy Scouts of some Americans. It’s not the Boy Scouts of America,” by which he means that the Scouts will not be truly a reflection of American society as a whole until they embrace the re-imagined
manhood of guys like Dale himself. But it was never the purpose of the Boy Scouts to be a reflection of all of humanity but, rather, to be an incubator of the very best of masculine virtue. To achieve this goal, the Scouts, of necessity, are compelled to exclude from employment all role models who might lead young males astray. Heterosexuality is the biological destiny of 98% of human males. It is their mental and moral health that is the first concern of the Boy Scouts. It is not the purpose of this private institution to confuse boys with a menu of possible gender-bender appetizers. For many struggling parents a gay-friendly scouting program would be their idea of the Boy Scouts from Hell.

In a rare moment of coherence, the New York Times reports that: “For tens of thousands of boys in the inner cities scouting offers not only rare access to the outdoors, but an alternative to the gangs and drugs that have devastated their neighborhoods. Scouting provides male guidance in neighborhoods where men are often absent. It is these scouts who are the biggest casualties in the battle over gay rights, said Mr. Cohen. Suburban troops rely on parents who volunteer their time and money. But in the inner city, where volunteers and money are scarce, troops depend on paid leaders and corporate donations.” So these scout troops are cash-strapped and struggling.

Gays, by contrast, are one of the most pampered segments of the American population. Sixty percent of gays occupy white-collar positions. Their childless status leaves them with buckets of free cash. They use their wealth to bankroll organizations that will work to expand the gay social comfort zone. Sometimes this means pressuring corporations to withhold donations to poor inner city black kids, even as the gays whine that they are “victims,” just like the black folks.

In Atlanta, Ron Coleman heads a group of African-American parents who support an inner city troop. Says Mr. Coleman, “A lot of my scouts come from single-parent female households. The mothers are looking for programs where their young men can get exposure to older men who are morally and ethically correct.” Quoting from the Times: “These mothers, Mr. Coleman said, do not want gays leading their sons.”

Said the Times: “After the Supreme Court ruling…dozens of corporations, local governments, school districts and United Way chapters across the country withdrew millions of dollars in support or the free use of schools for meetings.” All because of a feverish anti-scouting campaign by gays and with the rousing support of the New York Times, I might add.

Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg polished his liberal crown by yanking his generous donations to the Boy Scouts. Said the Scout’s Los Angeles area council executive Steve Barnes, “Steven’s high-profile departure crushed us.” What did he expect from a Hollywood poser who would place the social agenda of a few homosexuals above the emotional health of thousands of boys? Spielberg made a moral choice: the boys were expendable.